This invention relates generally to social networking and, in particular, to aggregating and displaying geographic information about users of a social networking system.
Social networking systems capture and store large volumes of information from various sources. Information stored by the social networking system will often be associated with a geographic location. When providing information about a user a social networking system may present a map interface including markers indicating geographic locations of different types of information pertaining to the user. For example, a map interface may present markers identifying geographic locations associated with photos of the user and comments posted by the user while at the marked geographic location.
However, as the social networking system accumulates more information about the user over time, it becomes difficult to read the information on the map interface. For example, the map interface may become cluttered as the system obtains and displays new information as the user adds new photos, friends, and other information associated with a location. Although viewers of a map interface may be able to discern one map marker from another, this will not always be the case. For example, viewers may wish to browse information about a user's visit to a particular location, but markers identifying the user's visits to other nearby locations may make it difficult to identify the marker corresponding to the particular location.
Furthermore, as a variety of information related to geographically close locations is captured in large volumes by the social networking system, aggregating the information into compact, yet information structures, allows viewers to more efficiently consume such information. In addition, information from a certain location often is related to other information from nearby locations, making it desirable to associate or display such information together. For example, it may be interesting for viewers to see photos of a user from his vacation in conjunction with that user's status updates from the same vacation. However, if the map interface displays information segmented by individual map markers at geographically close locations, viewers wishing to view the user's overall vacation information are forced to individually identify map markers to retrieve information. This makes it difficult to concurrently view different types of information related to a particular location.